Florida governor Ron DeSantis spoke at a rally on behalf of New York GOP gubernatorial candidate Lee Zeldin on Saturday, saying New York must “stop coddling criminals” and become a “law-and-order state.”
“The No. 1 thing I hear where people get so fed up is they are sick and tired of the crime that you see, particularly in New York City,” DeSantis told the crowd of several hundred people on Long Island. “Florida is a law-and-order state. I am a law-and-order governor. If Lee Zeldin gets into office, New York will become a law-and-order state, and he will be a law-and-order governor.”
DeSantis went on to call the state’s crime problem “totally self-inflicted.”
“You cut police budgets, you do things like eliminate cash bail, and you have rogue prosecutors who won’t even enforce laws that they disagree with,” he said. “Of course you’re going to have streets that are less safe.”
He said New York needs a leader like Zeldin who will support law enforcement and stop “coddling” criminals.
The rally comes days after New York governor Kathy Hochul drew criticism over comments on crime that she made during a debate with Zeldin.
“Anyone who commits a crime under our laws, especially with the change we made to bail, has consequences. I don’t know why that’s so important to you. All I know is that we could do more. We could do more,” Hochul said when Zeldin pointed out that she had not talked about “locking up anyone committing any crimes” during the debate.
Zeldin brought up the debate moment at the get-out-the-vote rally on Saturday, saying: “There was question after question after question about crime, and that’s good because this is a really important topic to so many New Yorkers.”
“See, we want a government that isn’t passing pro-criminal laws. We want district attorneys that actually do their jobs and enforce the law, and we want to back, unapologetically, our selfless, dedicated men and women in blue,” he said.
He said he gave Hochul a “tip” during the debate when he pointed out that she had “not yet covered the whole prosecuting-the-bad-guy part of keeping our streets safe.”
“I was helping her, and her response was that she does not understand why this is so important to me,” he said, to booing from the crowd. “And when Kathy Hochul says that she does not understand why this is so important to me, she’s saying she doesn’t know why this is so important to all of us.”
Earlier this month, two people were shot outside Zeldin’s Long Island home while his 16-year-old daughters were in the house alone.
Zeldin said Saturday: “You want to know why this is so important to me, to fight crime? These two girls were at home doing homework at their kitchen table when my house just three weekends ago became the site of a drive-by gang shooting.”
Every voter National Review spoke with at the rally cited crime as a top concern. Other top-of-mind issues included vaccine mandates, Covid-19 shutdowns, masking of children, corruption, cost of living, and the border crisis.
Fran Cosentino, 70, from Westhampton said she came out to the rally because “we have to save New York from these radicals”
She cited crime as her top priority, followed by the economy.
“I was just in Manhattan this past week, and I would not take the subway; it cost me $150 just to take cabs back and forth from Park Slope to Manhattan, which is ridiculous because we’re afraid, and even walking in Manhattan you’re afraid someone is just going to just come and bop you on the head or whatever,” she said, adding that the “stench of pot is overwhelming in the city.”
DeSantis said elections in other states have implications for Florida because miserable blue-state residents are fleeing to the Sunshine State at a rapid clip.
Zeldin noted that New York leads the country in out-migration. “The reason why people are leaving this state is because of a breaking point that is being hit,” he said. “A tax on wallets, and safety and freedom, and the quality of our kids’ education.”
The rally, held on the first day of early voting in New York, comes as the race between Zeldin and Hochul has increasingly tightened in recent weeks.
RealClearPolitics recently designated the race a “toss-up.” A polling average from the site shows Hochul leading by 7.3 percentage points.